:02.2005 Thomas Köner www.koener.de
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The Banlieu Du Vide video-installation by Thomas Köner (Bochum, Germany, 1965), presented at Sonarama during the last edition of Sónar has become one of the most highly praised projects in the extensive and outstanding career of this German artist.

This is a perfect opportunity therefore to come a little bit closer to the work and the persona of one of the most highly reputed artists on today's experimental electronics scene.

Interview with Thomas Köner for SonarOnline.

- In the Banlieu Du Vide installation you make use of visual materials from surveillance cameras. Yet its particularity resides precisely in the fact that the object of surveillance is absent. The image actually resembles a fixed photo. Can you tell us about this project, the motivations behind it and the relationship that the installation establishes between image and sound?

Many of my compositions are based on soundcolour rather than melody or harmonic movement. But soundcolour to me also relates to colour as a visual quality that unfolds its subtle changes through time.

The grey-scale character of the music – trafficnoise that became compositional material as grains of sound – is reflected by the black&white surveillance camera images. I collected these images during a period of several months and the slow changes in the video resemble a large timespan. The installation setup with 4 channel audio allows me to compose the music spatially, like a sculpture that is defining a space. The effect of the work is immersive and a total deceleration.

- You started out professionally as a sound engineer for films. What does this background represent for you and in what ways do you think it has influenced your later artistic career? Tell us about your work as a composer for films in collaboration with artists such as Jürgen Reble and Yann Beauvais, and about projects such as the one on silent cinema you did for the Louvre Museum in Paris.

I studied music at the conservatory and apart from learning to 'hear' I did not find it very satisfying: too much musical instruments, notation, scores and hardly a relation to 'sound'.

The producer's side seemed to be much more interesting to me and after school I was working for 3 years in a postproduction studio.

There I learned a lot about sound both abstract and functional: an analytic approach that embraces microscopic detail as well as the overall atmosphere.

For me this was a very useful training to be able to study the relation of image and sound within the commercial realm. But basically it was about combining image and sounds to make them more realistic and manipulative. Here I felt the need to once create 'audiovisual' in a way that would allow both image and sound to expand to their very own power and beauty.

The performance- and installation works with Jurgen Reble and Yann Beauvais were motivated by this.
I love silent cinema. I got my first commission '94 by the Louvre Auditorium. Until today I did numerous silent film musics for them and other museums, recently working on "Destiny" by Fritz Lang.

- In the mid XX century, Pierre Schaeffer and concrete music inaugurated a way of working sound which brought this field closer to film editing processes. However, Schaeffer was offended when people insisted on seeing representations of the world in his sound productions. In view of your experience and the importance your trajectory gives to the relationship between image and sound, what is it about this relationship that interests you the most? What are the similarities and differences between sound and the image as experimentation material?

There is no relationship between image and sound. Two senses are adressed. The rest is conventions and habit. I need to learn seeing and hearing in a way that I can develop sensitivity.

The image/sound relationship that is forced by the industry is about amplification only. Sound has to amplify the image or the narration. As they cannot trust the power of their image (guess why!) they need more and more sound, orchestras, sub-bass, 4, 5, meanwhile up to 8 channels are diffused. This is inflation and in its center is always a lack of trust and inherent quality.

It is quite obvious that I am trying to work against inflation. This is why in each work I am also adressing the attention span by allowing image and sound the space they deserve. By stretching the attention span I can afford to see and hear subtleties and details.

Similar to physical muscle stretching, which beginners describe as painful, my works are sometimes described as boring. In the same way, this deep boredom can function as a door through wich rooms are entered, rooms that are rich of unseen and unheard experiences.

- In recent years you have combined your projects in the installation field with numerous concerts. Despite being different areas, your interventions in both areas always seem to demand an intense involvement on the part of the spectator, a certain kind of immersion. What in your opinion are the differences between working in an exhibition area and on the stage?

Working on stage is more challenging. An artwork in an exhibition is already categorized, like a wild animal in a cage.

At a concert, a general attitude of entertainment is always more or less involved, and I find it satisfying to create vison and focus that goes beyond that. On concerts I sometimes get the impression that people are not too much interested or even fed up with 'the arts', but still they are open-minded when involved in a more concert/club situation.

- Your concert at Sonarama, during the last edition of the Sónar Festival, received an enormous amount of praise from the audience. Are you aware of the extent to which the audience enjoys your concerts? If so, does this in any way affect the way the concert turns out? Can you tell us how a concert of yours works from the stage?

A concert should not be a preset situation. Each audience is different, and I try to be aware of the situation and to create a space in which my time and work may connect to other peoples time: it's more like an invitation.
I don't mind if people walk in or out, talk or drink during a concert.
If there is content, it cannot really be destroyed. And if there is no content, you can't create it by keeping the doors closed during the concert.

- And finally, I’d like to ask you about what your next projects are.

This year I am doing new installations in Canada, Korea and Taiwan.
I do a new collaboration work with video artist Eva Teppe to be premiered at ARCO Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid.
Right now I am working on music for the the silent film "Urwaldsymphonie" (1931) for a presentation at the Centre Pompidou, Paris February 12 & 13.
The next live performance of my KONTAKT DER JUNGLINGE project (collaboration with Asmus Tietchens) will take place March 4 & 5 at
La Casa Encendida, Madrid

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